The Great Graffiti Caper
by a blurred someday
Summary: What do you do when someone you've hurt in the past is put in danger? You step up, that's what, and you make sure no one hurts her again. A MacDick story.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hi everyone – here's my second Mac/Dick story. I suppose it's set at the beginning of their sophomore year at Hearst. I wrote it rather quickly, so I can't say for certain that there aren't any typos or plot holes. If I find anything glaring, I'll repost. There will be two more chapters to follow. I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

Mac awoke slowly and started when she realized she had no clue where she was. She sat up and brought her hands to her head. No apparent bumps. She wracked her brain, trying to remember her last actions…could there have been a tequila bender involved? No, no, that wasn't it. She gave up speculating when she realized she was alone in a large, empty room. When she reached the door, she amended her earlier observation—she was alone in a large, empty room that was locked from the outside. 

"Well, crap."

* * *

With a half-smile on her face, Veronica approached the table where Dick and Logan were wrestling over the remaining cheesy-fries on the table. 

"You know," she said as she rested her palms on the tabletop, "It always makes me nostalgic when I see you two playing."

Logan immediately released his hold on the scruff of Dick's neck.

"Why Veronica, there's no call for sarcasm. If I wanted to, I could give you a list of five mature things I've done this week. Maybe even seven," he told her with a schooled look of nonchalance.

The smile left Veronica's face. "I wasn't being sarcastic."

Logan's expression faltered. "Oh."

Next to Logan, Dick heaved a loud sigh. "Are you guys headed for another reconciliation? Because I don't know if my fragile psyche can handle this on-again, off-again thing for much longer. And, yeah, I used the word psyche," he said to Veronica. "Know what it means and everything."

"But can you spell it?" she responded before she heard someone calling her name from across the room. Without turning around, she rubbed her hands together and looked at the ceiling with a wistful expression. "Ah, the dulcet sound of someone desperate for my help. I never tire of hearing it."

She turned then, and saw Max hurrying across the dining hall.

"Veronica!"

"Yeah, I got it," she said. "You need my help. Cut to the specifics."

"Mac's been kidnapped."

* * *

Mac banged her hand against the door for what felt like the thousandth time. Beyond frustrated, she let her head fall against the door. That was the moment when the door swung outward, sending her toppling at the feet of a well-dressed blonde woman. 

"Hey," the woman said. "Is there a reason you're on the ground?"

"Well," Mac said, "I simply couldn't choose between all the elegant and luxurious furnishings, and that's why I ended up on the floor."

The woman laughed. "You're pissed. I get it. Sorry about the drugging and everything. And I wouldn't have locked you in here, but we had business to do. We picked you up a burger, though."

"I'm a vegan."

"Oh." She turned to the tall man in a suit behind her. "Oliver, go get her something vegan."

Mac stood up. "Not that I'm not excited at the prospect of food, but I'd be downright giddy if I knew why I was here."

The woman nodded. "Your boyfriend, Max. I assume you know he had a thing with an escort?"

Mac nodded uncomfortably.

"I'm her agent. One of her regulars came back from overseas recently and was very disappointed to find her out of business. And I've got to keep my customers happy."

Mac felt a chill go down her spine at the woman's last comment. The blonde seemed to notice.

"We're not going to hurt you. We just need you as leverage until your boyfriend gives up Wendy's information. And you can call me Sandy, by the way."

"Is that really your name?"

"No, but that's what you can call me."

"Why did you take me?" Mac asked. "Wouldn't Wendy care more if you snatched Max?"

"I figure that Wendy will come back if we can just talk to her, but she probably wouldn't if we held her boytoy captive," she said. "Also, I'm a traditionalist. Kidnapping boys just seems wrong, somehow."

"But grabbing girls from their rooms is okay?"

"Now, now, don't get testy. You'll be back to your own computer-centric world before you know it. Speaking of, Happy here is quite the techno geek. He keeps talking about some computer system with a dirty name."

"Ubuntu isn't a dirty word," the large, black man grunted.

Mac perked up and was soon happily defending the merits of the OS X system and devouring a vegan burrito.

* * *

"I think she's in serious trouble," Max said. 

Veronica looked at him, unimpressed.

"Mac's not really the kind of girl who's going to feel the need to check in with her boyfriend every hour—are you sure she isn't just busy with school stuff?"

"I'm sure," he said. "I just got this." He held up his cell phone and showed Veronica a picture of Mac lying on her back on a cement floor. There was graffiti on the wall behind her, and while there was no obvious damage to Mac's head, she looked very pale.

Veronica's face paled a bit, too, and she put the phone facedown on the table, then looked up at Max seriously.

"Do you know who would do this?"

He opened his mouth but didn't say anything. He started to speak a few times, but he kept trailing off. Veronica was growing impatient.

"Hey, it occurs to me you've never seen me demonstrate how my taser works," she said conversationally, reaching into her bag.

"Okay, okay," Max said quickly. "I know who did it, and what they want."

"Well, that's easy enough, then: give it to them," Veronica said, her voice daring him to contradict her. Her fingers flexed on the taser when she saw him shake his head slightly.

"I don't think I can do that," he said. "They want Wendy."

"I thought Wendy took off," Veronica said.

"Well I've sort of been talking to her again," Max said, averting his eyes.

"You're cheating on Mac?" Logan asked with an edge to his voice. He came around the table to stand next to Veronica, his arms crossed over his chest.

"No!" Max said. "We've just been talking, a lot. And I'm pretty sure I saw one of her madam's lackeys following me around last week. I guess he found out we were talking."

"Which guy was it?"

"The tall, creepy one."

"Did you get a license plate?"

"No, I never saw a car."

"Okay, well, first thing's first. We need to—" Veronica stopped mid-sentence. "Where's your phone?"

"Better question," Logan said. "Where's Dick?"


	2. Chapter 2

Dick hopped into his truck and peeled out of his parking spot, clutching the phone he'd swiped from the dropout, hooker-loving weirdo who was leaving Mac in harm's way because he didn't want to give up his on-the-side booty call. He didn't believe for a minute that the guy was just "talking" to his ex-pro ex-girlfriend.

He looked at the picture on the phone again just to be sure, and then he nodded to himself. He definitely knew that graffiti. There wasn't much to go on, but the design behind Mac's head was distinctive. He'd spent a lot of time in that old warehouse during his tenth-grade dalliance into skateboarding. He looked at the long, dark hair pooled around Mac's face and frowned. He missed the bright streaks.

He pressed down harder on the gas. Without taking his eyes off the road, he leaned over and opened the glove compartment, feeling around to make sure the gift from his dad was still there. When he found it, he straightened up again, his face set in determination. He was going to get to Mac, make sure she was okay, and then kick some ass.

* * *

"Why would Dick take the phone?" Veronica asked Logan. "You don't think he'd try to find Mac himself, do you?" 

"Doesn't seem likely," he answered. "But it also seems unlikely that he would take the phone to keep you from finding her. I would have thought he'd just be, you know, indifferent to the whole thing."

"Okay," Veronica said, clearly thinking up a plan. "You try to get Dick on his cell. Then we need to figure out where Mac is. Then we'll—"

"Uh."

Logan and Veronica turned to look at Max.

"What?" Veronica asked, visibly annoyed.

"I kind of know where Mac is."

Veronica's eyes narrowed. "Where is she?"

"Well…" Max cast his eyes around the dining hall, avoiding her eyes again.

The charge buzzed across the top of Veronica's taser.

* * *

Mac picked at the remains of her burrito, trying to avoid the eye of Oliver, the tall, broad-shouldered man who was currently standing by the door, watching her. Sandy and Happy had gone to an appointment of some sort (she was sort of glad she didn't know the details). Now there was no one to discuss technology with and no one to protect her from Oliver's creepy staring. 

He was really starting to freak her out.

She pulled at her nightgown, trying to make sure it covered everything. She wore pajama pants and a t-shirt to sleep every freaking night, but of course, the night she gets grabbed from her bed is the night she breaks the trend. Of course, _of course_, when she's trapped in an abandoned building with unsavory characters, she's wearing the gingham nightgown that her mother bought her from the Gap last Christmas. She guessed that the lesson here was to do laundry before her drawers were practically empty. Also, to buy a deadbolt for her door.

She twitched her legs restlessly and the hem of her nightie rode up. Oliver was moving before she could drag it down again. The cement floor scratched her bare feet as she scurried backwards.

"I've seen your boyfriend," he said in a low, gravelly voice. "Good, pure girl like you is way too good for a little punk like him."

She wanted to argue with him that she wasn't pure, she was tainted, and she had been for a while, but her throat seemed to have closed up. Every instinct in Mac's body was yelling for her to run, but there was nowhere for her to go. She scrambled to her feet and prepared to fend him off however she had to. Her back hit the wall with a thud and he kept coming at her.

* * *

Veronica gripped the door handle as Logan's Range Rover turned a corner at a dangerous speed. 

"I'm still not getting this. Why didn't you go straight there, if you knew where she was?" she asked Max.

"Well, I figured you could come up with some plan to get Mac back without giving up Wendy, like when you blackmailed that judge."

"You just put Mac in more danger!"

"I don't think that they'd hurt her," Max said.

"A half hour ago you said you thought she was in serious trouble!"

"Yeah, well I don't think it's really a healthy environment for a young girl," he said sarcastically. "I want to get her out of there, but remember last time, how they faked all those bruises on the other girl?"

"Remember how they threatened that next time they wouldn't be fake?!"

Logan sped up but put a soothing hand on Veronica's arm. "It'll be okay. We'll get there before they do anything to her."

* * *

Mac screamed. She screamed louder than she thought she could. She kicked her legs and tried to lash out with her fists, but Oliver had her arms pinned above her head. Mac squirmed as much as she could, trying to wiggle her way out of his tight grasp. The feel of his clammy hand on her thigh made her skin crawl. Her wildly racing mind realized that this was what had happened to Veronica and Parker, except they didn't know it happened until it was over—she was pretty sure this was worse. Terror made her voice catch, and his weight on top of her and the cloying smell of his cologne were making it hard for her to breathe. When she found the breath to yell again, he backhanded her across the face. She was stunned into silence, which only made the sound of the gunshot more shocking. 

A second later, Oliver rolled off of her, clutching his calf and moaning loudly. Mac got a clear view of her rescuer and had a strong, wholly inappropriate urge to laugh. She would have, if there weren't still a scream stuck in her throat. Dick was standing over them like the vigilante hero in some third-rate action movie, with his gun still trained on the larger man and anger etched into the planes of his face.

Mac gaped at him for a solid five seconds before she could get her mouth to work again. And even then, her brain hadn't quite caught up.

"Who on earth let you have a gun?"

Dick snorted in amusement and quickly helped her up without ever taking the gun off Oliver. After a second of consideration, he pulled the trigger again, shooting the man in almost the same spot as he had the first time.

Then he took Mac's hand and led her out of the building and away from the sound of Oliver's excruciated screams.

* * *

A/N: Here's the second chapter - again, I wrote it quickly, so I'm sorry about any mistakes. Also, I realized I forgot a disclaimer before. So, I hereby disclaim. Thanks to the people who reviewed the first chapter, I really appreciate it. One more chapter to go! 


	3. Chapter 3

Mac stumbled a little as she tried to navigate the uneven ground with no shoes. When they made it to the pavement, she quickened her pace, making sure to dodge some shards of glass from a broken beer bottle. Dick's legs were longer than hers and she struggled to keep up as he pulled her by the hand. All the muscles in her body were protesting, but she pushed herself to hurry up, because she'd rather have sore legs for a few days than be dead for always if any of the Hookers 'R' Us employees caught them.

When they finally got to the truck, Dick backed out of the lot at breakneck speed and swung the truck around to get onto the main road. He focused on getting them far away from that place, while at the same time texting Veronica, "I got her. Meet at hotel." He then shut his phone off. He didn't need Veronica to interrupt while he made sure the girl next to him was okay. When they'd gotten a few miles away from the vacant building, Dick looked over at Mac. He felt a strong wave of some unnamed emotion come over him as he realized that her hands were shaking.

The strap of her nightgown was hanging off her shoulder. After another second, she seemed to sense his gaze on her pale skin, and she reached up and fixed the strap. He looked away.

"Thank you," she said hoarsely.

"He didn't do anything, right?" he asked, instead of answering her. "Not really?"

"He didn't get the chance," Mac said, shaking her head. She looked up at him with big eyes. "You shot that guy."

"Yeah, I did."

"Twice," she said, with a note of disbelief.

"I know," he answered, concentrating on the road.

"What if he dies?"

"He probably won't. And I don't really care if he does."

"What if he comes after you?"

Dick took his eyes off the road long enough to look her in the eye. "Let him come."

The rode in silence for a few more miles, before Mac said softly, "I didn't think you cared."

He didn't say anything for a minute, and then finally he cleared his throat. "I got to thinking a while ago, and I decided I couldn't let anyone hurt you again."

She stared at him for a few seconds before her face crumpled and she put a hand over her eyes, crying silently. Dick turned into the parking lot of a bowling alley that had seen better days and turned off the car. He pulled her to him across the center console. Mac clung to him, her fingers digging into his arm and his back.

"That guy was going to rape me," she said after a few minutes, her head resting on his chest.

"Yeah, and then I shot him," Dick reminded her, as he brought his warm hand to the back of her head.

"You could go to jail," she said.

"Please. Like that guy's gonna call the cops on me. Plus, who ever heard of going to jail for shooting someone in the leg? Lame. If I'm going down they're getting me on charges of serious badassery."

Mac laughed a little and wiped her face with the back of her hand as she sat up. She winced when she put pressure on the spot where Oliver had hit her.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly, moving his fingers to her bruise, but not pressing down on the sensitive area. She nodded. "Good," he said. "Let's get going so Veronica can go all mother hen on you and your boyfriend won't feel so bad about not coming to get you when he could have."

Mac didn't answer, just nodded and looked out the window. Before he turned the car back on, Dick twisted in his seat and grabbed a sweatshirt from the backseat. He handed it to Mac and she pulled it over her head without a word.

* * *

Veronica glared at Max, who seemed entirely too composed for her liking. He was just sitting there on the curb. Veronica was the one pacing back and forth in front of the Grand.

She never paced. Pacing implied waiting helplessly for something. She was always the one doing something and leaving others to pace.

"Dammit, Dick!" she said out loud.

"Hey," Logan said from his perch on the hood of the Range Rover. "You know what I was just thinking about?"

"What alibi you're going to provide for me when the sheriff comes to ask me about the unfortunate death of one Dick Casablancas?"

"No. I was thinking about our first kiss."

Veronica stopped. The lines of her face seemed to soften for a moment, and Logan congratulated himself on bringing her back to that moment on the balcony. It's what he always did when things were too stressful—let his mind wander to that kiss, the kiss that he had always thought kicked the ass of any blockbuster romance movie kiss.

Veronica shook her head and looked back at Logan, her worried face back in place, but not quite as severe as before.

"This isn't really the time to be talking about things like that."

"Mac will be okay," Logan said, and he hoped Veronica understood that he was trying to help, not downplay the danger Mac was in. Veronica nodded and Logan knew that she did understand.

" It's just—" she opened and closed her mouth, looking for the right words. "That photo on the phone…it reminded me so much of—"

"I know," Logan said. Of course he knew. The image of Lilly's lifeless stare as she lay on her back by the pool would haunt him until the end of his days. And he knew it would haunt Veronica, too—especially since she had seen the real thing, not just the video footage.

"I can't let anything like that happen again," Veronica said quietly.

Logan opened his mouth to respond, but that was when he spotted Dick's truck pulling into the lot. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Mac in the passenger seat, and he smiled at Veronica as he pointed over her shoulder. She spun around and almost sobbed in relief before running toward the truck. She had Mac's door open before Dick had even put the truck in park.

"Are you okay? What happened? Tell me!"

"Not now, Ronnie," Dick said, trying to sound as non-confrontational as possible.

"How did you know where she was?" she asked Dick. "What did you say to them? They just let you walk out?"

"Please, you think you're the only one with mad sleuthing skills?" Dick asked. He fixed Veronica with serious look. "And again I say, not now."

Veronica looked at Mac with her lips pressed together. "Okay. What can I get you? Do you want to go home, or to my house? What do you need?"

"I'm fine, Veronica, I promise," Mac said firmly as she climbed down from her seat, mindful of her bare feet. Dick got out and joined her.

"See, I would believe you, except there's this exotic purple flower blooming across your cheek," Veronica said.

Mac just gave Veronica a small, genuine smile, then walked past her to where Max stood.

"Hi," she said.

"I'm really glad you're okay," he said, moving to hug her. Mac let him put his arms around her, but she didn't return the hug.

Mac squinted up at him in the sun. "Look, I understand why you didn't want to tell them where Wendy was," she said quietly. She heard Dick scoff behind her. "And I even understand that you talking to her doesn't mean that you cheated on me or anything. But I think, if I'm going to be with someone, I should be his priority. So." She left the rest unsaid and walked back toward Dick's truck.

"You want to go get some coffee?" she said.

"You're buying," Dick said. "I totally just saved your life."

"Yeah, except I forgot to grab my wallet while I was being abducted," she pointed out with a smirk.

"Fine," Dick said with a burdened sigh that covered up his smile. "I'll pay this time. But next time, it's all you, dude."

"Uh, hey," Max said, stepping forward hesitantly. "Do you have my phone?"

"Oh yeah," Dick said, reaching into his pocket. Before Max could reach out and take it, Dick dropped it to the ground and jumped on it twice. "Oops," he said. He stomped on it one more time before turning and heading toward his truck.

"We'll get some ice for your face, too," Dick said to Mac as he got into the car.

"Maybe I'll dye my hair to match the bruise," Mac said thoughtfully as she shut her own door.

Dick's reply was lost to the sound of the engine. As they drove away, Logan came to stand next to Veronica.

"What just happened?!" Veronica demanded.

"I think that was the beginning of a beautiful, albeit slightly disturbing, friendship," he said, sounding bemused.

"But Mac and Dick can't be friends. They don't even like each other."

Logan shrugged. "Neither did we, once upon a time."

* * *

A/N: There it is, the final chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. I've been toying with an idea for a sequel, but I'm not sure I have enough plot to merit another story. Anyway, as always, please let me know what you think! 


End file.
